ABC's Top Five Lamest Hidden Camera Attempts to Expose American Bigotry

Tomorrow marks the end of the latest season of What Would You Do?, a
hidden-camera production of ABC News hosted by longtime correspondent John
Quinones that uses actors to stage uncomfortable scenarios designed to find
intolerance and bigotry among average Americans. Not too many years ago, ABC
News felt it had to apologize when an on-air reporter
wore a coat indoors in front of an image of the Capitol building, to make it
appear she was on location, when in fact she was at ABC's Washington, D.C.
studios.

Now, the network's news division routinely uses deception to lure
unsuspecting citizens into situations aimed at catching them spewing hate
against Muslims, gays, Hispanics, etc. In reality, of course, all the Friday
night program really demonstrates is the low opinion ABC News has for average
Americans' character, and the network's obvious need to prod their audience to
behave better. Here are five of the worst examples our analysts have
found over the past six years:

1. On
January 6, 2009, What Would You Do? went international. The show
hired actors to play "ugly Americans" in France. The clueless characters loudly
disrupted real French citizens sitting in a cafe. One woman told the walking
cliches, who wore George W. Bush memorabilia, "This is nearly as if I had a
t-shirt, 'I like Hitler,' you know?" "Bob" and "Bonnie" offered up the worst
American stereotypes. Quinones cheered that the French "seem to relish putting
them in their place." [MP3 audio here.]

2. On February
3, 2011, Good Morning America previewed the latest show. In an
attempt to test Arizona's "anti-immigration" law, an actor playing a security
guard attempted to deport people who looked Hispanic. (The nonsensical concept
of a security guard deporting people wasn't questioned.) [MP3 audio here.]

3. In
a June 14, 2013 episode, a white man walked into a restaurant. The actor
snarled vitriolic attacks on an Arab man (another actor): "Since when are they
hiring Muslims around here?...Bet you go home and learn how to make bombs....I
don't want a terrorist touching my food or taking my order." In this episode of
What Would You Do?, like in most of the shows, the real Americans who
wander into the contrived scenarios tell the fictional bigot to stop his attack.
[MP3 audio here.]

4. Also on June 14, 2013, the program's host wanted to see if restaurant
patrons would lash out at a faux Boy Scout who announces he's gay. One child,
also an actor, sneered, "It's not called gay scouts, it's called Boy Scouts!"
[MP3 audio here.]

5. Keeping with the gay theme, on February
10, 2012, an actor playing a therapist told a homosexual teenager "we can
pray away the gay." [See MP3 audio here.]

Other examples show
the repetitive nature of the show: The latest season included a woman going on a
racist rant against South Koreans while getting a foot massage; a bigoted
basketball team mocking their gay teammate; and a transgender student facing
hate while trying to buy a dress.

Perhaps the fact that most Americans aren't racist might explain the
ratings decline. When it premiered in 2007, the
show attracted almost eight million viewers. At the end of
2012, it was down to five.

One constant in the show is that
Quinones and his producers are constantly disappointed.

Instead of fulfilling the show's goal of finding intolerance, Americans come
to the aid of those being insulted and fight back against the bigoted actors.
(In 2006, NBC gave up on a such a
show when the network failed to find actual racism.)

In six years worth of episodes, one scenario has yet to be explored: Hidden
cameras watching as actors, pretending to be liberal journalists, talk to ABC
News hosts, people like John Quinones. Perhaps the actors would mock the
American populace as
racist and homophobic. It's not hard to guess how ABC's reporters might react in
such a situation.

-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

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